Stage 11 Building Project update – 22 October 2014
Those of you on Facebook have been able to see some photos of the new land development so we thought it was time to give you a fuller update.
As of 22 October:..
The date for practical completion is Friday 27 March next year, which is a week before Easter and the Term 1 school holidays. Practical completion is the stage of a building project when the works have been completed in accordance with the contract. Generally, practical completion means the works are completed to all relevant statutory requirements (apart from minor defects or minor omissions) and are reasonably suitable for habitation. Some examples of minor defects or omissions may include paint chips or missing cupboard door handles. Practical completion and hand-over do not necessarily occur at the same time and we are hoping to get access to at least the classrooms prior to practical completion.
The first three of the classrooms and the staff room should be finished by the commencement of the 2015 school year, but past experience tells us that this is unlikely. It will be finished before the carpark works, however, and the architect advised me this morning that we can commence occupancy whenever those classrooms are ready even if the carpark/setdown area is not yet complete.
On the carpark/setdown work, our excellent Builders (Tomkins) are currently in the process of completing the subgrade works. In transport engineering, subgrade is the native material underneath a constructed road, pavement or railway track. These works involve compacting the subgrade before the construction of the road and carpark and stabilising it with the addition of road base. The asphalt will then be laid over the top of this (thank you, Wikipedia).
With respect to the classroom building, the builders are in the process of constructing the retaining walls around the building pad, which is the highly technical term for the mound of material on which the building sits. This material is a mixture of a kind of stone that compacts really well with a binding of a kind of very find sand which binds the material together.
We hope to bring you more updates as work progresses with more frequent photo updates on Facebook.
John Dohler, Business Manager